Grange wants attorney Isat Buchanan sanctioned for quoting derogatory Vybz Kartel lyrics about the DPP

Gender Affairs Minister, Olivia Grange, has called for People's National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding to immediately fire Chairman of the PNP Human Rights Commission, Isat Buchanan.

Buchanan has drawn ire for quoting lyrics from convicted murderer and dancehall artiste Vybz Kartel's song The Menace, in which the deejay references Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn.

Buchanan made the comment while speaking with a social media blogger.

In a media release on Monday morning Grange called out Buchanan for using “misogynistic, crude, nasty, sexist, low and disgraceful language in reference to the country's chief prosecutor.”

Speaking on behalf of the Jamaica Labour Party's Women's Caucus, Grange said: "We are mindful not to appear to politicise the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions or the holder thereof. However, right is right and wrong is wrong and the truth of the matter is if the holder of any office in the PNP or anywhere directed that comment at any female, we'd have condemned it and insisted that action be taken against him."

Grange has called on Golding to condemn Buchanan's posture.

She also wants the disciplinary committee of the General Legal Council to immediately probe Buchanan for breach of the canons of the profession. 

Miss Grange said she's disappointed that an attorney and chairman of a body within the PNP could bring himself to utter such insolent and vile comments in reference to a woman.

The Gender Affairs Minister said the comments represent a new low in the treatment of women by men in the PNP. 

“It is Mr Golding's own action to politicise the DPP that has created the environment for some men in leadership of the PNP to believe they can refer to this woman public servant using hateful, vile, harassing and bullying language. The comments have disrespected every woman in leadership across Jamaica and must be concerning to every well-thinking man in politics and in the wider society.”

Grange is also inviting all women in leadership, including PNP Chairman Dr Angela Brown Burke and the PNP Women's Movement President Patricia Duncan Sutherland, to join her in condemning Buchanan's "vile and inappropriate rhetoric against another woman in leadership, regardless of the tension that may exist between the government and the opposition on the matter."

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